Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller said there is no need yet for a special counsel to investigate the CIA's destruction of video recordings of two suspected terrorists being interrogated.

Rockefeller was joined by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, a member of the intelligence panel, and House Republican leader John Boehner in rejecting a call by Democratic Senator Joseph Biden for an independent probe to determine whether there had been an obstruction of justice in the case.

``I don't think there's a need for a special counsel, and I don't think there's a need for a special commission,'' Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, said today on CBS's ``Face the Nation'' program. ``It is the job of the intelligence committee to do that.''

Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden, in a Dec. 6 letter to CIA employees, disclosed that the agency destroyed the interrogation videotapes in 2005 to protect the interrogators' safety. Lawmakers rejected that assertion, and the Rockefeller's panel is conducting an investigation separate from a preliminary inquiry announced yesterday by the CIA and Justice Department.

Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Attorney General Michael Mukasey should appoint the special counsel because ``this leads right into the White House.''

``There may be a legal and rational explanation, but I don't see any on the face of it,'' Biden, a Delaware Democrat who's seeking his party's presidential nomination, said on ABC's ``This Week'' program today.

Not Necessary

Ohio's Boehner, asked to respond on CNN's ``Late Edition'' program, said ``I don't think that's necessary.'' Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and a member of the intelligence panel, said on CNN that she is willing to let Mukasey start sorting out the facts.

``This is going to be the first time the new attorney general will have an opportunity to show his independence, and I think we should let that play out,'' she said.

President George W. Bush first learned of the tapes and their destruction in his daily intelligence briefing by Hayden Dec. 6, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said last week. Perino said White House lawyers are helping the CIA collect facts in the case.

``It's hard for me to believe that senior members of the White House somehow didn't pay attention to this or didn't know about it,'' Hagel, of Nebraska, said on CBS. ``I would say that is gross malfeasance and incompetency if in fact that did happen.''

Waterboarding Legislation

The revelation of the destruction of the recordings is figuring into the debate over the detention and treatment of suspected terrorists in U.S. custody. House and Senate negotiators agreed to legislation Dec. 5 that would ban CIA agents from simulating drowning, or waterboarding, in interrogations. The Bush administration has come under fire from Republican and Democratic lawmakers for refusing to brand such techniques as torture.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, said investigators should find out why the tapes were destroyed.

``If we're covering somebody's rear end, we need to expose their rear end and kick their rear end for doing something that's against the best interest of the United States,'' Huckabee said on ``Fox News Sunday.''

Senator John McCain of Arizona, who also is running for president, said on ABC that the destruction of the tapes ``harms the credibility and the moral standing of American in the world.''

Rockefeller said Hayden is scheduled to testify before the Select Committee on Intelligence Dec. 11 to discuss interrogation techniques used by the U.S.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nadine Elsibai in Washington at nelsibai@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: December 9, 2007 15:19 EST